EXPERTISE DIFFERENCES IN ATTENTIONAL CONTROL BETWEEN ANDWITHIN BASEBALL BATTERS

摘要

A simulated baseball batting task was used to investigate the role of attention in hitting performance forexpert and novice baseball players. In Experiment 1, we compared the relative effects of attending tostimuli in the external environment (tone frequency) and attending to skill execution (bat movement) onbatting performance for college players. When non-switch hitters batted from their preferred plate side orswitch-hitters batted from either plate side, attending to the external environment had no significant effectrelative to single task performance while attending to skill execution degraded batting performance. Whennon-switch hitters batted from their non-preferred plate side the exact opposite pattern of results wasfound. In Experiment 2, we compared the relative effects of attending to stimuli in the externalenvironment presented either within or between swings for novice and expert batters. For experts,attending to the external environment had no significant effect relative to single task performance in thewithin condition but significantly degraded performance in the between condition. Novices showed theexact opposite pattern of results. These findings are consistent with the dominant theories of skillacquisition and indicate that the optimal attentional focus varies substantially across and within performersof different levels of expertise.